Friday 17/10/03 Athlete, Alfie, repairman @ Carling Academy, Liverpool

Right, this confusion over Liverpool’s various academies has gone far enough. For the second time, we turn up at the wrong venue (what was wrong with calling it the L2 anyway?), and as such we miss the Beck-Gomez hybrid that is multi-instrumental duo repairman. Fair cop, guv. In the absence of our own thoughts to offer, we turn to the bouncer to shed some light on how good they actually were. He replies, “not my cup of tea, to be honest, mate.” Which is fair enough.

When Alfie arrive onstage, however, he has our total and devote sympathy. This
 is truly not a good night to be at the Carling Academy. Despite opening with a Mercury Rev-esque tape loop, our fears are confirmed when the Manc six-piece reveal themselves to be the same bumbling, post-baggy bollocks they used to be. Singer Lee Gorton, admittedly looking pretty dapper tonight, moves like a constipated Mark Morris and sings like Tim Burgess with a throat infection. The other members look exactly like what they used to be: Badly Drawn Boy’s backing band. And whilst witnesses to the new birth of Alfie have waved the word ‘prog’ around, Gigwise suspects these were people who have never actually heard prog, but assumed ‘long songs’ was the official definition of the genre. Bandwagoneers, be warned: Twisted Nerve is the original Deltasonic and Alfie are its chief export. Avoid this road, for it leads straight to Mediocre City Central.

Athlete, of course, are no stranger to that particular road, having trodden that beaten path over the last two years to amass an astonishingly devoted fanbase. The audience is made up of the sort of people who think that the V Festival has a “really cool line-up”. Every year. Mystifyingly, they seem to know the words to every single song, and bellow along at great volume. As middle-aged parents stand shoulder to shoulder with twenty-something professionals, it’s clear that Athlete’s hugely successful album ‘Vehicles And Animals’ is firmly locked in battle with Dido and The Darkness to be 2003’s essential purchase for the one-record-a-year crowd.

There are two good moments: ‘New Project’ has an instrumental bit that goes quite fast, and ‘One Million’ closes with an all-too-brief techno exploration that halts the boredom for at least a little while. The paying customers, however, lap it all up, and whilst Athlete’s take on observational pop songwriting may be one-paced, derivative and stunningly boring, it has still managed to tap into the national psyche in such a way that suggests they may well be the new Travis – witness the ecstatic crowd reaction to latest single ‘You Got The Style’ as proof. Shit as they may be, they have etched their low-rent-Blur celebrations of everything that’s ordinary about living in Britain today onto the everyman public consciousness, which is a feat few bands ever achieve. Put them on the main stage at Glastonbury next summer and watch the crowd go wild. Funny how things turn out.

Photo by Paul Stevenson